


Protective Lies

by jujubiest



Series: Barrison Week 2016 [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, BarrisonWeek2k16, Gen, Post-The Reverse Flash Returns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 21:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5980929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since he watched Thawne fade from existence, Barry has been pretending. Now he can't pretend anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Protective Lies

**Author's Note:**

> My (late) fill for the Barrison Week 2016 prompt for Day 1: Morning After

Barry wakes up feeling…bereft. There’s really no other word for it.

Yesterday, the Reverse Flash was here. He was in this universe, in this time, and as much as Barry would like to pretend otherwise, having him back in their lives felt…not _right,_ never that. But it felt _familiar_. Comprehensible. There was a sense of surety and purpose that the man brought with his existence, one that had been absent these past months, an aching lack Barry hadn’t been able to put a name or a cause to. He had thought it was all about Nora, his mother, watching her die in front of him after doing nothing to stop it. Perhaps compounded by his father’s flimsily-explained desertion, as though the moment he was free to go where he wanted, what he wanted was to be anywhere but with Barry.

Those reasons he could have understood, and he would have needed no forgiveness for them. But this? This sense of helpless _loss_? He hates himself for it, because it’s something he shouldn’t feel. It’s something he thought he had let _go_ of, the need and the love exorcised from his heart along with all the hatred he bore Harrison Wells.

And yet. There was a time when the mere presence of Dr. Wells—the only name Barry would ever really know him by, in his heart of hearts—was a driving force pushing him to run faster, be better. That voice in his ear, always saying what he needed most to hear in that moment, always urging him to do the impossible, redefine what was possible, do it _again_. The way he understood Barry’s powers in a way no one else could.

There are other things, too…things Barry has never allowed himself to think about before now. The note of pride in that voice when he succeeded, the real, tangible _fear_ in it when he was hurt, or in danger. The smile that seemed real only when he looked at Barry, and the way he always hid it away quickly, as though ashamed of it.

The way he could be so kind when Barry needed it, and too the way he could be ruthless, horrifying…also when Barry needed it. He did the hard, terrible things that Barry couldn’t do, so that Barry wouldn’t _have_ to do them. He kept Barry alive and let his hands remain clean. Even when Barry wanted to hate him for that coldness, he couldn’t, because he could never shake the knowledge that it was all _for him._

So much of that man, what he thought of that man, had turned out to be a lie. But Barry could no longer convince himself that all of it had been. Harrison had done terrible things, had hurt Barry in ways from which he would never recover. And it had been so easy for Barry to rip out his memory wholesale, to tell himself that the good was merely part of the charade, that every moment between them had only ever been to sell the lie.

But now he couldn’t pretend anymore, and god it hurt, because that strange, twisted, brilliant man had also loved him, as much as he had hated another version of him, as much as he was capable of loving anyone. It was easy to see the difference now, with the memory of Eobard Thawne’s face in front of him, so different and yet still with so many echoes of the man he had known, twisted with _real_ hatred, the kind un-tempered by confused, frustrated love.

Perhaps that is what has him lying awake in the dark of the early morning, staring at the ceiling and thinking of the man who was a part of his life for so long and who had taken little pieces of Barry with him when he disintegrated into nothing. Who had come back to him, impossibly, for a short time only to leave again with a bigger piece of Barry in tow…the piece that had been protected by the thought that Harrison Wells—Eobard Thawne—had been lying when he said he loved him.


End file.
